ReBubble: new life for used soap and jobs for disabled workers

The ReBubble initiative not only has a way of recycling soap but operates a workplace where people with disabilities can do fulfilling work. Photo: AFP

It's pretty standard for hotels to include a sign in the bathroom about reusing your towel to help the environment but have you ever wondered what happens to that bar of soap that you unwrapped, then used just twice?

Most likely it's sent to the garbage, with hotels around the world throwing away 1,800 bars of soap each minute, but that's starting to change thanks to ReBubble, which not only has a way of recycling soap but operates a workplace where people with disabilities can do fulfilling work.

In Aachen, Germany, students collect hotel soaps and recycle them with the help of workers with disabilities to produce new, sustainable and solidarity-based soaps.

Avoiding waste in the hotels

Each second, 300 soaps from hotels are thrown away in the world, which equals 950 million soaps going to the incinerator, whereas they are barely used. In order to fight against this waste, the ReBubble project proposes a second life to these soaps.

Thanks to a partnership between four big hospitality groups, the voluntary students who created ReBubble organise the collection of used soaps. They are then sent to a working centre who partners the project, where people with disabilities recycle the soaps: they are chipped, cooked and cast to create new ones. The soap production is then sold locally.

A social soap

This soap recycling process is made up of simple gestures, designed to be inclusive and accessible to everyone. Recycling hotel soaps has an ecological dimension, allowing big hotels to reduce their carbon footprint. But it also has a social utility, allowing people with disabilities to access decent and fairly paid work. – AFP Relaxnews